City of Steel (Chaos Awakens Book 3) (11 page)

The desperation and horror of what the Drayid had become was something Xan doubted would ever be completely cleansed from his mind either, and he had no right to expect freedom from that burden.  The Drayid were gone forever, and that was Xan's responsibility.  He had burned them away like dry wood in a fire.  They had agreed to let him do so of course, but that didn't change the fact that he had wiped them from existence.  He had resolved the terrible mess that humanity had created, but in doing so he'd condemned an entire race of people to oblivion.  Xan would keep the Drayid’s story with him for the rest of his days while what remained of the rest of humanity wouldn’t remember anything. Of course, Xan might not be carrying their story around long anyway.

A man with a similar look about him to Lottan approached Xan, climbing onto the roof of the moving cart via a ladder that led to the top seats from inside.  This was Lottan's younger brother, apparently the greater mechanna genius of the two.  Xandrith had first met him in the aftermath of the attack by the orc's band of mercenaries.  His name was Gryn, and he was the man primarily responsible for the design and upkeep of the carts.  He'd been the one to turn Xan's scrap metal into the parts needed to repair the cart. 

"How is your brother?"  Xandrith asked as the man approached him.  Gryn had a mechanna right hand, a thing of gears and intricate metal workings that seemed almost as agile as a human limb.  He'd lost the hand working his art, as so many of the mechanna did.  Their power sources were sometimes unstable when first built and many mechanna lost limbs or eyes to the process. Gryn had told Xandrith that their techniques were improving and the work was getting less dangerous though. 

Gryn shook his head, looking as tired on the outside as Xan felt on the inside. "He's going to lose most of his right leg and part of his left. Probably both of his arms. We don't have the equipment to perform the amputations here so he has to wait until we reach Forge Haven. Hopefully he’ll survive long enough."

Xandrith had only recently learned of Forge Haven.  It was a mechanna city allegedly built inside a mountain.  The ground was said to be layered in great steel slabs, and the rock walls were reinforced with strange metals that only the mechanna knew how to create.  Lottan and the members of his caravan believed it was a last sanctuary for humanity, a place the trolls couldn't find. If they did find it, the trolls wouldn't be able to get inside. Xan didn't know if he believed any place was safe, but it was nice that these people had something to lay their hope on.

Xandrith nodded numbly.  "How much further to Forge Haven?"  He asked.  It felt as though he'd been with the caravan forever, though it had only been a couple of weeks since he'd joined with them.  They were already well into the mountain trails, far further into the depths of the mountains than he'd ever gone before.  He'd generally thought of those jagged lines of rock as a thin layer of impassable stone, a natural wall. They divided his world from the alien places beyond, but the mountains were not a thin band.  They stretched on and on for miles.

If Xandrith looked back behind him all he could see were mountains now, and if he looked in the direction the caravan was heading, mountains on to the horizon. He was lost in an endless temple of jagged, frozen rock. The wind was growing colder as they progressed. It was as though they were heading into the grip of winter.

"We have another day and a half on the carts.  Assuming nothing breaks down, we should be there by nightfall tomorrow.  What will you do once we reach the Forge? Are you planning on staying with us?"  Gryn's question wasn't spoken with undertones of any kind, but Xandrith still felt as though what he was really being asked was, ‘How soon will you be leaving?’  Perhaps he was just reading too much into it, but he felt his welcome was wearing thin. 

"I will provision and leave quickly.  I have business higher in the mountains."  Xan's answer was lacking any firm conviction.  He didn't know where he was going after Forge Haven.  In theory he knew what he was looking for, but he didn't really know how he was supposed to find it.  Perhaps when he could still have seen the lines of magic he'd have been able to follow them to his final goal. Now he was magically burnt out though, so he didn't even know how to start his search.

"Higher in the mountains?" Gryn didn't seem convinced. "Trast, there isn't anything higher in the mountains. It gets colder the higher you go, and eventually it gets so cold that the air goes thin and frigid. Humans can't live up there for long. I don't know what you think you're looking for, but you aren't going to find it in the mountains. There isn't anything up there but frozen rock and the Unth."

Xan's attention peaked.  "The what?"  He'd never heard that term before.

"The Unth, Sky Dwellers, some people call them.  I'm not sure what they are, really.  They're a bit like were-creatures, but they don't have a human form.  They're more reasoning than were-creatures.  The Forge occasionally has dealings with them, but they mostly keep to themselves.  They're very territorial.  They don't let anyone up into their lands.” 

"The Unth."  Xandrith repeated their name.  "Do you know if there are any of them at the Forge now?"  If there was truly someone living in the peaks, maybe they would know how to find what Xan was looking for. 

Gryn shrugged. "I doubt it. I'd say we see them maybe once every ten years, if that. They don't stay long, and they don't talk much. Usually they only approach us to make sure we're keeping clear of their boundaries."

Xan nodded slowly. "Is there any way to contact them?"

A suspicious look was settling on to Gryn's face. "I don't think you want to get involved with them, and you'd be better off not pushing their good nature. They haven't caused the Forge any trouble, and we go out of our way to make sure we return the favor. If you're thinking about starting some kind of trouble..."

Xan shook his head. "No, not trouble, but they might have information that could help me find what I'm looking for."

Gryn didn't seem comforted by Xan's words. "There isn't a good way to reach them anyway. If they want to contact us, they'll do so. If you're going up into those mountains to find them, you're doing it on your own. Forge Haven certainly isn't going to approve."

"I have no intention of claiming to represent your people Gryn, but I will be going up into the mountains. The business I'm about can't be left undone."

The mechanna sighed and shrugged. "You don't seem to be the type of person that can be talked out of things once you've set your mind about it."

Xandrith chuckled.  "No, not generally.  I've never relied on a consensus of opinions to make a decision, and I'm not about to start now."  His eyes passed over the mountain cliffs, almost getting lost in the sparse landscape. Scraggily plant life fought for purchase amongst the rock, but it was clearly a losing battle this high up. Some of the rocks looked almost brown, Xan hadn’t noticed there was so much variation in rock before being completely surrounded by it in its natural form. It was as though the Earth had struggled up as high as it could go in places, trying to get free of the plants that always covered it. It had to go so high to get free that it had just ended up cold and graying instead of really finding what it’d been searching for.  "I don't have the time to waste to making everyone happy.  Events are moving too quickly.  Sometimes I worry I'm already too late."

"Too late for what, Trast?  What exactly are you trying to accomplish?"  Gryn asked, and not for the first time.  The mechanna's curiosity often got the better of him. 

"If I told you that, you'd think I'd lost my..." Xan's words trailed off as his eyes snapped to movement amongst the snow covered rock face of a nearby cliff. "What's that?" He pointed.

Gryn turned to look, squinting to sharpen his vision. "I don't see anything." He said after a moment.

Xan had lost sight of whatever it was as well, but he refused to look away. Maybe he was going crazy, but that hadn't been just a trick of his eyes.  He was well trained in observation, and he trusted his sense of sight impeccably.  Something had moved amidst the rocks, and it hadn't merely been an animal.  There were few of those so high up in the mountains, and this hadn't moved like any goat or mountain elk Xandrith had ever seen.  He kept watching. 

"Maybe it was just your imagination." Gryn said, and then he laughed lightly. "Or maybe you're just trying to distract me from..."

"Look!"  Xan snapped as the telltale motion appeared again.  He pointed up to a mountain pass that crossed the one they were currently traveling. 

Gryn squinted his eyes and fell silent. The movement came again. Xandrith could see the change in Gryn's facial expression as he too witnessed the motion across the snow. "It's probably an animal." He said, a lack of certainty in his declaration.

"A two legged animal, taller than a man, shadowing our motion?"  Xan was more than merely skeptical. 

Gryn looked at him, worry heavy on his brow, but didn't say anything. 

"Can we get these carts moving any faster?" Xandrith couldn't be certain, and he wasn't ready to voice his suspicion, but his instincts were telling him that he'd just seen a troll scout. If there was one, there were likely more of them not far away. There was no way to be certain how long they'd been shadowed.

"It would be dangerous to move faster over this terrain."  Gryn replied. 

"More dangerous than getting caught in these valleys with whatever trouble that thing might have in store for us?"   Again Xan refused to give voice to the word ‘troll,’ as though that might summon the beasts down upon them all. 

Gryn didn't reply, but he stood up and gave his voice to the wind.  "Wagons to full throttle.  We're making a run for the gates!  No stopping until we hit the safety of Forge!"  The driver of the wagon Xandrith and Gryn were riding on gave a very brief, worried look over his shoulder, and then the almost imperceptible hum of the cart intensified.  A moment later the entire caravan was moving even faster along the snowy, worn road.  There was a reckless thrill to the momentum.  They were traveling as fast or faster than Xandrith had ever seen a horse move, and nothing at all was pulling them forward.  It made the magic of the mages seem insubstantial. 

Gryn and Xan sat low along the roofline of the cart, silent, the buffeting of the wind too loud for conversation.  They both watched the frozen rocks around them as though at any moment they might spring to life and attack.   A shrill trilling call ripped through the cold mountain air, louder even than the roar of the caravan along the snowy road.  The noise tore at Xan's ears, sending a wave of pain through his head.  Bright colors exploded in his vision for a second.  The caravan swerved like a snake, the carts weaving as their drivers suffered the same aural attack that Xan had just suffered.  Chaos erupted all around Xandrith, and before he even knew what was happening he was sailing through the air, thrown from the top of the cart. 

The world sailed by beneath him in slow motion as he twisted his body through the air, trying to ready himself for a rough landing.  He got a brief glimpse of the cart he'd been on sliding onto its side, and then he struck a deep bank of snow.  His speed was such that he plowed all the way through the snow and hit the hard rock beneath with terrible force.  His vision swam but he didn't lose consciousness.  Xandrith took just a moment to gather himself, to be certain that nothing was severely broken, and then he began to pull himself from the bank of snow in which he was enshrined. 

There had been a time when being buried in so much snow would have chilled him to the bone and numbed his hands, but his trollish flesh didn't seem to find as much offense in the cold.  He pulled himself from the depths of the white landscape and crawled back to his feet.  Devastation lay before him.  Five carts lay smashed amongst the boulders along the roadway, their inhabitants in varying states of disarray.  Xandrith made his way back towards the carriage he'd been riding upon, looking for Gryn.  It didn't take him long to find the mechanna, or what was left of him.  He hadn't been fortunate enough to be thrown from the top of the wagon.  The entire thing had rolled on top of him and skidded across the roadway.  His corpse was a twisted mess, strewn from where the cart had first gone upside down, to where it had come to rest. 

The doors and windows had flung open during the roll and there were a number of people broken and trapped in the opening. No one looked unhurt, and more than a few had limbs severed or bodies torn open by the vicious rolling.  The unblinking eyes of a young girl stared out from where her head lay, attached to her body only by a shattered strand of spine.  Xan had spoken with her just that morning before her mother had chased her away. 

The trilling, awful sound rang through the air again, blinding Xandrith for a moment as it sent a wave of agony coursing through his head. Screams sounded from the wreckage. Survivors writhing in confused agony as that terrible keening split the air. The surviving carts were streaking away through the snow. They'd been told not to stop until they reached safety, and for them that was the best option. A sense of hopelessness hung in the air amidst the screams and groans.

"Gather the survivors.  I need some able bodied men and women who can help me get at least one of these carts righted.  Is there anyone that can drive these things?"  Xandrith called as he approached the broken wagon.  The trolls were coming, and if any of these people wanted to survive they needed to get moving.  It only took him a few moments to realize that the cart he'd been on was not salvageable.  He didn't need to know how they worked to understand that the broken wheel axles were impossible to repair as quickly as they needed to. 

Survivors of the accident were beginning to crawl from the wreckage, some crying, some looking off into space as though they weren't certain where they were.  Xan had seen those slack jawed expressions before.  In times of severe trauma some people seemed to leave their bodies behind.  The only way they could deal with the horror was to slip away to some quiet corner of themselves.  They wouldn't be of any help like that.